The Not Fake Newshttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." - Samuel AdamsTue, 26 Sep 2017 18:29:39 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/d1eb3ff212bfe20e6ab159d8d0d91c6e?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngThe Not Fake Newshttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com
Places We Didn’t Reviewhttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/places-we-didnt-review/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/places-we-didnt-review/#respondMon, 25 Sep 2017 19:55:15 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=20662]]>The Not Fake News exists because of the distressing tendency of the media to thrive on negativity and chaos. We oppose the fearmongering and divisiveness by being a voice for reason whenever we can. When we write a review, it’s because it was so very good we felt absolutely compelled to speak up; people need to know the good things in life.

The trouble is, people deserve a warning sometimes when the food is just not worth the trip or the price, and we can give it to them. Likewise, if there’s one aspect of a place that’s world-class but the sauce tastes like ketchup, the pulled pork is mush, and the brisket is nothing more than a glorified chuck steak, that needs to be recorded too.

So here’s the master list of Places That Are Not Quite Worthy:

Dickey’s Barbecue Pit: Dickey’s is the biggest barbecue chain in the US, and they do achieve consistency. One rack of ribs looks a lot like the next, and they taste OK if uninspired. But the pulled pork is soggy, the brisket is chopped beef, and the rest of the menu is similar. It’s a chain, and it tastes like a chain, which would be OK if it were priced as a chain. Plus sides: Sides, and free ice cream.

The Pit, Raleigh NC; Motto — “Everything But The Squeal”: I wanted to be impressed; I really did. It’s an amazing atmosphere, slightly upscale but with a view directly into the bustling sparkly-stainless kitchen. There’s tons of history and a brilliant menu, and the prices while high are not unreasonable. But. It’s just not remarkable; there’s exactly one sauce, and it’s not that good. The ribs are bland; the meat is fatty and overcooked. The sides are decent and the portions plentiful, but overall it’s just not good enough to get a review. We’ll give them another chance someday, though.

Dinosaur BBQ, Troy NY: The service was delightful and the wings were oh-my-God legendary. I enjoyed the fried green tomatoes and the deviled egg, and there’s a pepper sauce that’s worth killing for. Everything else was disappointing, particularly the other sauces — bland and without character. The ribs tasted like the meatloaf-ketchup sauce they were topped with, and everything else was similarly bland. I’d go back for the wings and I’m itching to try the nachos, but otherwise? Give it a pass.

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/places-we-didnt-review/feed/0gnerphkThe Bacon Tree, Winterport, Mainehttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/the-bacon-tree-winterport-maine/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/the-bacon-tree-winterport-maine/#commentsMon, 25 Sep 2017 19:08:01 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=20638]]>Full disclosure: I saw no evidence of barbecue here. But it was so good it’s getting a review anyway; after all, what are rules for if you can’t break them?

In a tiny room off to one side of the Winterport Winery sits one of the best breakfasts in Maine (not to mention lunch and dinner). We passed up Dysart’s for this, and we were not disappointed.

The Bacon Tree started off as a reservation-only Friday night dinner spot, a part-time home business that blossomed and grew into an oh-my-God must-visit in a part of Maine that doesn’t have those. We went for breakfast, and despite the crowd my coffee was kept hot (and fresh!) and the food came out perfect. I would particularly recommend the homemade corned beef hash (but with four eggs, not two) and the French toast is to kill for.

Lunch is remarkable in its own right, but there’s no time; dinner takes pride of place. The menu is varied and ever-changing, and unless you call in advance there’s no way to be sure what’ll be on it on any given day. Which is something I find bloody well beautiful; in our modern age of chain consistency where you can get anything you want so long as it’s a grey burger, unique and reliable creativity is a resource to be treasured. I can’t give you detailed recommendations for obvious reasons — but everything we tried was excellent.

What else can I say? Go here and eat! Do it now!

The kitchen is tiny and the dining room seats about forty people, so if you’re going with a group, call ahead and warn them. (207) 223-4313, closed Monday and Tuesday

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/the-bacon-tree-winterport-maine/feed/1bacon tree logognerphkSt. Louis Blueshttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/st-louis-blues/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/st-louis-blues/#respondTue, 19 Sep 2017 20:23:34 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=20590]]>On the second day of March, 1955, two women were asked to give up their seats on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. They were black, and it was the policy at the time that, if any white people were standing on any crowded bus, black people should move back and, if there was no room, to stand.

But Mrs. Hamilton was pregnant and tired, and she didn’t want to get up. And the young lady sitting next to her refused as well.

The bus driver called the police, and when they arrived, they convinced a black man behind the pair to move so Mrs. Hamilton could take his seat. But the young lady still refused to move, and she was arrested for disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and assault. She was handcuffed and jailed. Her name was Claudette Colvin.

We all know Rosa Parks, who was arrested some nine months later for the same act in the same city. She’s famous because she had an organization behind her, one determined to make her famous, believing that as she was well-known, well-spoken, and had charisma, she would make a better public face for the court cases that eventually brought down the segregation laws. But it was the Browder v. Gayle decision, where Colvin was among the five plaintiffs, that actually succeeded.

For the past several nights in St. Louis, Missouri, social activists have marched in protest of the court decision acquitting former officer Jason Stockley in the shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith following a violent encounter and car chase. The prosecution alleged that Stockley, who is white, engaged in an act of premeditated murder, going so far as to plant a gun on the dead (black) driver after deliberately executing him. The accusation was sensational, the evidence less so; the previous circuit attorney had declined to prosecute in 2012, but then protestors showed up at her house. That event may have influenced her not only to begin the prosecution but, in time, to retire before the case came to court.

A judge has viewed the evidence and ruled in favor of the accused. Evidence supporting the accusation was unconvincing; the circumstances were sensational largely because Stockley had been carrying a personal weapon, an AK-47, when the events began — contrary to department policy. I won’t go so far as to call this a righteous shooting, but a judge has, and judging by everything we have access to, I’d find it hard to dispute that. In fact, with what I can find out, I’m wondering why this ever went to court in the first place; there seems to have never been much chance of a conviction.

There’s a common perception that law enforcement has a problem with race and with excessive force in apprehension. The “Black Lives Matter” movement has arisen from several similar high-profile cases in recent years, and they’ve been out in force this week in St. Louis. Businesses have been vandalized; citizens have been terrorized. The word “riot” can be applied here without stretching the truth.

The thing is, there’s a reason the NAACP backed Rosa Parks instead of Claudette Colvin. Parks was an adult, well-educated, and respectable. Both she and Colvin were in the right, but Parks could command a following, whereas by the time of the trial, Colvin had become pregnant and was no longer considered respectable.

Stockley was a gung-ho cop who broke the rules, and it’s probably a very good thing he’s no longer on the force. But Smith was evidently armed and dealing heroin, and was not merely evading or resisting arrest but had actually struck the officer with his car while attempting to escape.

It should be harder to get shot after a car chase, certainly. But unless we’re going to stop our officers from pursuing criminals, or from carrying guns when their targets are armed, it’s tough to see what they can do differently that would change the outcome of a similar case. It’s arguable that the harm caused by enforcing drug prohibition outweighs the harm caused by the drugs — and there’s a way to demonstrate with that change in mind; this isn’t that.

There’s a time to protest, and this is not it. Smith is no martyr to the cause of equality; he’s just a man who resisted arrest and achieved death by cop.

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/st-louis-blues/feed/0COLVIN200-48ca886d51d65f2111116d8cb84cdf89925538d3-s400-c85[1]gnerphkWar On Peace In Piedmont Parkhttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/war-on-peace-in-piedmont-park/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/war-on-peace-in-piedmont-park/#commentsSat, 19 Aug 2017 06:00:12 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=20311]]>“I don’t know who would learn history from monuments. We have history books for that!“

People in general don’t read. This is nothing new; literacy has traditionally only ever been for the elite, not the general masses that make up the work force. Very few have ever learned anything from dry histories anyway. History books and facts as names and numbers and dates — that’s why we fell asleep in class.

But spend a day with me at Gettysburg and I can show you what it meant to fight there. I can take you to the spot where the future was created, tell you the tale of the lost shoes, show you where Reynolds fell and why it mattered, where the 20th Maine made their stand and how, and let you see the terrible beauty of Pickett’s Charge.

Some of our monuments have nothing unique to teach, it’s true, but most are set in some sort of context. The location of the “Peace Monument” in Piedmont Park in Atlanta tells a tale all its own, for instance — a story most people will probably never learn, because while the history is both fascinating and strangely beautiful, the monument has been targeted, and now politics will get in the way.

The siege of Atlanta by Union troops in 1864 was a turning point of the Civil War. Southern resistance was starting to crumble, but they were holding out hope due to the ongoing presidential election in the North. That all changed when Atlanta fell; newspaper correspondents were thick on the ground, and while the papers didn’t print photographs at the time, the images in the papers were lurid enough. Factories and supply depots, rail yards and ammo dumps — they all burned that night when General Hood marched away, and the descriptions in the papers won Lincoln the election as much as anything else. The South was doomed, and much of Atlanta lay in ashes.

The first of the militia units defending the city from the Bluecoats had been the Gate City Guard, founded in 1857 to help preserve order in an emergency. Formed around a core from the city’s fire department, the unit was comprised of many of Atlanta’s leading citizens. They performed with distinction during civil emergencies, particularly during the Mercantile Fire of 1859, and during secession they volunteered as a unit for military service. After the war, the surviving Guard disbanded with the rest of the Georgia state troops, but it was reformed after Reconstruction and eventually absorbed into the National Guard, where it still exists today as the 122nd Infantry, a training outfit still based in Marietta.

But back in 1877, tensions still ran high between North and South. The last of the Federal occupation troops had just been withdrawn from Georgia by President Hayes, and Atlanta had still hardly begun to rebuild. The process was slow and investment hesitant, burdened by the continued resentments over the “late unpleasantness”. But a prominent citizen named Joseph Burke conceived an audacious plan to address this. Under his leadership, the Gate City Guard reformed — once more as a private militia — and in 1879 they began what they called the “Peaceful Invasion of the North”, a demonstration by a crack unit now loyal to the Union.

Their first stop was New York City, where they were received by the men of the Seventh Regiment. There, before an admiring crowd, they put on an expert display of marching and the arts of the drill, and later they banqueted with the New York boys. Captain Burke made a powerful speech, one worth quoting:

“The Southern flag… has been furled… We are again in our fathers’ house, and in the emblem that floats above, we recognize the Stars and Stripes of our forefathers, the colors of the Nation, the talismanic shield that will unite the growing states of this great country in one Union, inseparable forever hereafter.

“Here on Northern soil the sons of those who were estranged in deadly conflict but a few years ago, meet and embrace in the bonds of fellowship – united once more under the same roof – breaking bread at the same table; it is a grand subject, this glorious re-union and the fraternal mingling of two great sections of our country, representing a brave and magnanimous people. We feel that good may come of this visit to you. We know that the war and its evil consequences to us are things of the past and should be forgotten. The past is buried, and now we must look to the future.”

The goodwill tour passed through the major cities of the North and was met with great success. Bonds of friendship were formed between former foes, and the groundwork was laid for future visitations, eventually leading to the great reunions at places like Gettysburg, where veterans of both armies met and shook hands, reunited at last. Opportunities were taken for commercial bonds as well, and Atlanta’s businesses began a period of recovery and then rapid growth over the next several years.

When Georgia regularized the state’s militia in the 1890s, several of the members of the Guard found themselves too old to serve, and during a disagreement with the state government they chose instead to retire as a group. Calling themselves the “Old Guard”, they continued to participate in civic events, chief among which was the organization of the great Exposition of 1895 in what would become Piedmont Park. Notably, this was the occasion of Booker T. Washington’s famous address on the subject of race relations, one lauded by many leaders of the day, particularly the organizers of the Exposition. (It was criticized by W.E.B. DuBois, who dubbed it the “Atlanta Compromise”, feeling that it did not go far enough toward addressing social equality. Washington’s belief was that “The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.” It’s easy to appreciate both perspectives, particularly in the context of the times.)

It was on the site of this Exposition and not far from the location of the speech that the Peace Monument was constructed by the Old Guard. Dedicated in 1911, fifty years after Ft. Sumter, this was intended to celebrate the end of the War and the joys of peace, the accomplishments of the people of Atlanta, and the embrace of the Union. It was intended to commemorate in particular the legacy of the Gate City Guard and its Peaceful Invasion, and it was built in part from granite used in the Exposition.

I can’t tell you much about Burke as a man. He was born in Ireland, served in the War from its opening shots as a cadet of 16, married the daughter of one of the most prominent men of Georgia, and became highly active both in business and in philanthropy. He was an active organizer; the Atlanta Public Library and Grady Hospital both came about in part as a result of his efforts, and he was president of the Atlanta Humane Society for some twenty years. Today, of course, people mostly would want to hear about his attitude toward slavery, and of that I have little knowledge; all I do know for sure is that he tried to help his neighbors as best he could.

When you come right down to it, that’s really all I need to know.

In the light of its history, the monument Burke and his friends had built to commemorate peace is a singularly odd target for protest. With Stone Mountain to the east, the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield to the west, and hundreds of historical markers throughout the city, there are monuments aplenty to the Confederacy near Atlanta — but not so much in Piedmont Park. It’s been suggested that the Peace Monument celebrates segregation by omission, that it ought at the least to have recognized slavery and its evils — but that doesn’t consider the context of 1911 Georgia.

The main virtue of the park itself would seem to be convenience. It’s comfortable, wide open, has plenty of parking, and is easy to access not only from the city but anywhere in the region. Given that the Peace Monument was deliberately chosen as a demonstration site, and that it is wildly inappropriate for anyone to protest it, one must conclude that it was selected not as an offensive construction but instead as an easy way to deepen division, and to create conflict where none exists.

We’re told these statues should be pulled down, that they glorify a mythical vanished past and support the intellectually bankrupt philosophy of “White Supremacy”. We’re told that their place is in a museum, not in city parks. In many cases, this position may have merit — but not here; not in Piedmont Park Because anyone who knows the history of this monument and of this park should oppose vehemently any defacement and any vandalism. It tells a story, and the context of its location is the most appropriate one imaginable.

Photograph from the Old Guard’s website; no copyright is asserted by me.

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/war-on-peace-in-piedmont-park/feed/1PeacePiedmontgnerphkThe Honored Deadhttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/the-honored-dead/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/the-honored-dead/#commentsThu, 17 Aug 2017 08:37:32 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=20266]]>For a long time, there’s been a great deal of controversy about the effect of a legal fiction used during the Civil War. To this day, the U.S. Armed Forces maintain this position, and a lot of folks don’t much care for that fact. Let me simplify it a little and lay it out for you, and you can judge for yourselves.

The Confederate States of America was never a country; it could not have been. If the Confederacy had been its own country, that means its states would have successfully seceded from the Union. Had that ever happened, it would mean they’d have had to have been legally entitled to secede. Therefore, the Union never recognized the Confederacy and refused to negotiate with their officials. To do otherwise would have been to offer legitimacy, which could well have been used in a petition before the Supreme Court to declare the conflict an unlawful invasion.

That means the soldiers of the Confederacy were, officially speaking, misguided Americans. Therefore, as Americans fighting in duly constituted state militias, they deserve American military honors: hence the Confederate Memorial at Arlington, in addition to countless other national monuments.

After Reconstruction, they officially became our honored dead.

Many were conscripts, same as in the North. Many fought because they could never have faced their family and neighbors had they not done so. I cannot imagine that men who understood warfare would have willingly lined up on a battlefield to exchange volleys with other men who also used rifled muskets; this supposition is borne out by the invention later in the war of modern entrenchments and their widespread adoption. They had no idea of the horrors they were getting into, and most certainly had no idea the war would last as long as it did.

These men were not categorically evil any more than any other. Most owned no slaves and did not benefit from slavery. Some few owned slaves and thought it was a morally proper thing to do; they were wrong, and some may have been evil men even according to the dictates of their time. But the past is another country, and it’s fallacious for us to judge its residents by the morality of today; we must instead judge them by their own lights.

I mourn the brave men who fought and died in this conflict even now, a hundred and fifty years after it ended.

Somewhere in the north of Maine, the little town where my forebears lived was a bustling little farming community called Amity. There were a few hundred people, mostly living in families of a dozen or so, and the whole place was under cultivation. Prosperous little farms stretched as far as the eye could see. There was a coach road, a farrier, and a little mercantile.

I’ve seen a tax map from 1883. Most of the farms were abandoned, most of the houses vacant. Some of my people made it home, but many didn’t; the 20th Maine had some heavy casualties at Fredericksburg and Gettysburg, and then later at the Siege of Petersburg where “Little George” fell. Today, Amity is all but deserted.

Much of the South went the same way, and that includes vast regions where there were no slaves to speak of.

An entire generation died, North and South alike. It is proper to mourn them, even today, when not a man of them would still survive, for they died untimely, often in great pain or terror. Many fell who would have written great books, invented wonderful things, painted masterworks, composed symphonies. With them died a national sense of innocence, a belief in virtue and the nobility of man; the flowery words of the time are all but incomprehensible today. The war was horrific and should never have happened; wise men should have foreseen and prevented it.

Slavery should have been stopped; in truth, it should never have come to these shores, to a land dedicated to freedom, to liberty, and to the proposition that all men are created equal. But it did come here, and when the civilized world ended slavery, it should have ended here as well. That it did not is a great shame, one our nation will have to bear forever. It is a part of our legacy, just as is the Trail Of Tears, Patrice Lumumba, and the Ponce Massacre among a hundred other foul deeds.

To dishonor our own dead would not be equivalent to any of these great shames. It would indeed be a foul deed, but no one would die as a result. Still, it would add to our national burden of guilt, and I do not want that.

We have enough to bear.

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/17/the-honored-dead/feed/2angelweepsgnerphkConfederate Monumentshttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/confederate-monuments/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/confederate-monuments/#commentsWed, 16 Aug 2017 13:43:29 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=20198]]>In Easton, Pennsylvania stands a massive monument to the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. There’s a central column seventy-five feet high surmounted by a statue of a bugler. Around the base are granite statues, plaques, plinths, and a fountained moat. It is massive, ugly, surprisingly tasteless, and dedicated to the honored dead.

And nobody is agitating to have it pulled down.

From Baltimore to Texas, all across the South, monuments to the soldiers of the Confederacy are being removed. Some have plaques listing the names of the fallen; others have only a single regiment or town on the plinth. Many are surprisingly tasteless constructions rendered in similar style to the Easton monument. –But of course nobody’s objecting on aesthetic grounds.

The Confederacy is defeated, its dead long buried, and even the survivors gone to dust. Scarce can anyone be found who even remembers meeting a veteran of that conflict, and its battlefields are now vast parklands which draw thousands of visitors every year. We memorialize there the thousands who fought and died, and following the examples set by such great men as Joshua Chamberlain and Robert E. Lee, we honor the fallen of both armies, that we may heal the wounds that still remain a century and a half later.

Forty years after that war ended, it became fashionable for towns to raise monuments to honor their fallen. In part because it would be unthinkable to ever again raise the regiments to battle our neighbors, many of these statues were planted in the middle of the town squares that had once been left clear to provide a drill ground for the local militia. Now, the time for that militia has passed, and instead of a place for mustering troops we have a patch of parkland.

Every small town in Maine has at least one of these monuments. There’s a tin soldier on a plinth, and it was raised in memory of the honored dead. Most of them date from around 1900, when some very convincing salesmen traveled North and South in search of a market for low-end foundries. They sold in large part because a lot of the boys who marched to war got buried on the battlefield, often with a marker reading “Unknown Union Infantry, Petersburg, #1028”. These are the only memorials they will ever have.

The difference between Maine and Virginia is the uniform on the tin soldier.

There is a movement afoot to pull down the old monuments — not on both sides, just those raised to the losers. The justification (as I understand it) is that the Confederacy was a government dedicated to the preservation of slavery, and that by extension every man who fought to defend it fought to enslave. The logic behind this is a bit thin; following it to its logical conclusion, we’d do as well to remove any monument to the fallen of 1812 and the Revolution, since the United States before 1861 was a nation which kept slaves. This could be stretched to some truly absurd extremes, but it’s immaterial: In any nation where the will of the many has power, there’s no requirement that this collective will must be either logical or reasonable.

Personally, I find it distasteful to remove monuments to the fallen. And yet, I know of one highway which was driven squarely through a cemetery in order to avoid expense. On Revolutionary battlefields that should properly be sacred ground, we now have cheap housing and Wal-Marts. At monuments in our nation’s capitol, protesters gather and burn flags. And much though it galls me, this is as it should be; we’re a free country, with property rights, free expression, and we’re governed by election and referendum.

But some of these monuments and some of the battlefields ought always be preserved no matter how much we need cheap housing. They’re physical representations of our history. And, while books can be burned, rewritten, erased — it’s tough to erase physical relics. This is the very reason that we established national monuments. Today we’re as deeply divided politically as at any time since the Civil War, and it’s vital that we remember its lessons now more than ever.

So far so good. But now I find myself confronted by an ugly fact: that there are those who agree with my desire to venerate history but who also hold odious views on skin color. These misguided souls are militant and organized, and they tend to collect on ground I hold sacred. They have their rallies and marches and they preach their hateful creeds, and because of them the statues I value are torn down even faster.

So now I’ve got another reason to detest the KKK. Just what I wanted.

Note: I’ve not mentioned current politics or political figures because they’re beside the point. They’re all speaking and making statements and condemning each other, and they expect our applause. They want us to direct our hate against the Other Side, as though all Republicans are Klansmen and all Democrats want to rip up gravestones. Personally, I have no wish to direct hate at anyone, and I certainly don’t condemn any one political party more than another. More to the point, at this time I refuse to enable the self-serving buggers by even mentioning their names.

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/confederate-monuments/feed/2SandSgnerphkMedia Bias: An Unbiased Guidehttps://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/media-bias-an-unbiased-guide/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/media-bias-an-unbiased-guide/#commentsThu, 10 Aug 2017 09:44:38 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=19959]]>All news media is biased, including me. And that’s the way it ought to be. It’s the manner and degree of bias in the modern mass media that’s so very unfortunate.

According to recent polling by Gallup (itself possibly subject to statistical bias), only about a third of Americans trust the news to tell them the truth. It’s that lack of confidence, deserved or not, which first led me to start discussing politics and social policy out here — and to name it “The Not Fake News”: I want reasonable and reliable journalism out there somewhere. And, even though I’m going to fail at that sometimes, it’s a worthy goal — and there damn well ought to be some people striving for it.

To be fair, there are quite a few solid journalists working today. Folks will differ about their preferred news source; heck, as Will McAvoy (fictional, alas) put it, “People choose the facts they want now.” But there are still those of us out there with the desire to think for ourselves and the willpower needed to put in the effort to make it happen — and those people deserve the truth.

The trouble with that is that every journalist will frame the facts differently. No event takes place in a vacuum; everything has a place in history, and each story has its own context. There is no news network capable of telling all sides of anything, if only because there’s nowhere near enough time in the day, much less for those restricted to a one hour program or eight column inches. For that matter, a lot of breaking news is reported once and then long forgotten by the time all the details come out — if in fact they ever do. But we the audience require the whole story; it’s not enough to say “Gunman kills eight in Pittsburgh” without also mentioning that it took place at a backyard barbecue, that there’d been escalating drug and gang violence in the neighborhood, and that reports indicated some of the attendees were not only armed but returning fire.

That particular headline is based on a real event, and I’m going to use it as an example to illustrate various common varieties of media bias. Note that the following list is not intended to be exhaustive but illustrative:

Oversimplification – Due to the limitations of most media, not discounting the attention spans of the audience, every story gets oversimplified. In our example, my summation above leaves the reader with an incomplete impression of events, permitting the creation of a false narrative. In this case, one thing I could have expanded on was the (allegedly) organized and tactical nature of the attack, which was apparently carried out like a classic infantry ambush.

Incorrect Information – The night of the shootings, the death toll was reported variously as two, three, six, and eight. According to later stories, it was eventually revealed that there were five adults and one unborn child killed by gunfire, and that all the fatal shots were (allegedly) fired from the same weapon. Also, the event took place in Wilkinsburg rather than Pittsburgh proper.

Infotainment – 24-hour news channels demand stories even when nothing is happening. Initially, this event was nationally covered largely because it fit into a months-long trend of violent acts, because it was sufficiently unusual, and because nothing else of note was happening at the time. It was several days before the Next Big Thing occurred (Russian troop movements) and the story was eclipsed. The demand for news in an otherwise dead time led to national coverage of every angle, including the (allegedly) controversial attitudes of a local news anchor. She was later fired over the resulting furor, which arguably would never have made national news at a busier news time.

The Unusual – It’s important to note that only the unusual circumstances surrounding this event gave followup stories enough interest for the facts to be clarified; otherwise, it would have soon been forgotten even on a slow news day. There’s a famous quote attributed to various editors that runs thus: “‘A dog bites a man’ —that’s a story; ‘A man bites a dog’ —that’s a good story.” The trouble is, a lot of important occurrences go unreported just because they don’t happen to be sufficiently unusual. A good demonstration of this principle can be seen in this story from the Post-Gazette: “There’s News In Planes That Don’t Crash”.

Opposites – One difficulty with most framing is that it’s often done in such a way that paints the story in black and white. There’s a simplification, in this case between “shooters” and “victims”; in this event, that tends to hide that this was (allegedly) a revenge shooting for an earlier killing (also allegedly) committed by one of those shot. That hardly justifies a slaughter at a backyard barbecue, but it does put it in a different context, one we really ought to be aware of.

Political – This is the form of bias people talk about the most, but it’s often the least practiced in fact — mainly because many stories are not political in and of themselves. In the case of our example, however, political bias was extremely evident in the spin and framing of followup stories. Every major network aired several pieces on gun control in the context of crime prevention, with respect to other recent mass shootings, and as a factor in the ongoing presidential campaign. This was so very pervasive that I released not one but two exhaustively-researched articles on the topic myself — in the process discovering some facts that changed my own position slightly. Curiously enough, the two weapons used by the attackers were (allegedly) found to both be stolen, which rather removes this incident from the context of the gun control debate — but that tidbit was, to the best of my knowledge, only reported by local station WPIX.

Cultural Bias – Media outlets tend to frame stories in a way that makes them easier for their audiences to understand, but in that way they pander to their preconceptions. We think of this in terms of politics, that Fox News viewers tend to be conservative whereas NPR caters to liberal intellectuals, but it also occurs with respect to region and country. The BBC, for instance, framed this as a typical gang shootout at the gateway to the American West; the New York Times focused on the apparent race of those involved; one Midwestern source concentrated on the death of the innocent unborn child.

Advertising – At another time, the national media might have opted to concentrate on the Russian takeover of the Donbass, mass protests in Syria, recent American sanctions against North Korea, or any of a dozen potential stories of international interest. Instead, and arguably because that year involved record media buys by political campaigns, they opted to focus on one event that showcased a political hot potato. Incidentally, that focus led to yet another of that year’s mini-spikes in firearms sales and NRA members. Coincidence? Probably not.

Bias Toward Fairness – Speaking of the boost in firearms sales: There was a common theme in the conservative press at the time that the President was planning to seize firearms — despite a complete lack of evidence to that effect. In point of fact, the Brady people, gun-control watchdogs, rated President Obama as ineffective as he possibly could be in that area. Nevertheless, every other major media outlet covered gun seizures in opposition to the conservative narrative even though that angle was completely baseless. Sometimes, there are two sides to a story; more often there’s one or five. In this case, there was only one valid side — but it got covered as though there were two valid arguments.

Confirmation Bias – Reporters, editors, and media producers tend to be highly educated, intellectual, and fairly liberal in their political views. As a result, they tend to see events from that perspective and then report them that way, even when the actual facts turn out to be somewhat different. This shooting, for example, was reported as an offshoot of gang or drug violence and possibly even random; as it turned out, while there was a criminal backstory, it was (allegedly) motivated by simple revenge — and far from random.

Race and Gender – This was frequently reported in terms of race, as a black-on-black crime, but with a lot of time given to the pregnant woman who was killed. In a sense that’s valid; in another, the motive was (allegedly) simple revenge, and race was immaterial. As it happens, I’m at present unable to readily find any clear-cut and comprehensive analysis of the ethnicity of those involved from an unbiased source. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, but there’s just too much sensationalism to wade through for that search to be worth my while.

Power Bias – During the last presidential election, it was clear that many media outlets supported one Democratic candidate over the entire rest of the field, whether Democrat, Republican, or otherwise — so much so that immediately following the election, the New York Times explicitly apologized for it. During this period, the major American media corporations (there are only five, or arguably six) held such polarized positions on values that many content editors opted to tacitly follow the corporate lead rather than risk their jobs. That the risk was real was underlined by several firings and resignations, both public and private, during that period. With this particular story, this can arguably best be seen in the emphasis on race, on gender, on firearms — and in the case of the fired news anchor.

Legality – In the United States in particular, the past decade or so has seen an erosion of source protection for the news media. The government in particular frequently involves itself in what it considers breaches of national security; as well, the highly litigious nature of American society creates an environment that tends to repress free expression in the press. For an example of this, scroll through the preceding list and look for the words “allegedly” and “arguably”.

There are two major sources of bias that have nothing whatsoever to do with our example. But, because they’re common and influential, we’d be remiss to fail to mention them:

National/Governmental Bias – This can be readily observed in government-owned or controlled networks. In the classic dictatorship, all the media is pro-government; in a strongly nationalist society, much of the media is at the least patriotic. The BBC is in theory governed by an independent neutral board, but is nevertheless famous for downplaying stories that cast the government (and particularly the royals) in a bad light. In the United States during a time of war, the vast majority of news stories about that conflict are strikingly in favor of national policy. One well-known example of this is the use of the term “Terrorist” to describe an enemy whereas “Freedom Fighter” described him back when he was still an ally.

Bias Toward Experts – The media normally reports what recognized experts on any subject tell them to report. Which makes sense; in any esoteric field, who would embrace the ideas of someone with no professional standing? Unfortunately, this has the unintended consequence that unpopular findings tend to be delayed until they achieve widespread acceptance — which, cyclically, is less likely to happen when the media refuses to credit it. Conversely, this also tends to lend credence to any half-baked idea that gets published in any pseudo-scientific journal merely because it has the word “study” in the title. It’s essential to note here that, in general, the experts tend to be right (which is why they’re called “experts”) and science reliable — but, given that journalists are rarely expert scientists, they often mistake the important for the merely self-important and vice-versa. One well-known instance of this is that the public perceives Pluto as no longer being counted as a planet, whereas there’s actually a great deal of scientific division on the subject, opinions being almost evenly divided among astrophysicists.

As I mentioned before, the preceding list is far from exhaustive. It’s also itself biased, which was intentional: I deliberately framed each entry from the perspective of a single news story in a particular time. I did this in order to demonstrate the value of perspective in reporting.

Had I simply listed a set of facts, this article would have been dead boring. I tried to write it with a context, something to make it relevant to you, the reader, in order to make the individual ideas easier to understand. And, while my own efforts are by necessity imperfect — all else aside, if I go over 2000 words, very few people make it to the bottom of the article, so I’m prone to oversimplify — they should serve to illustrate a basic truth of journalism, one proclaimed by the late great Hunter S. Thompson:

So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

Journalists are human, and bias is both ubiquitous and frequently useful. When kept within professional limits (which it often isn’t these days), it permits us to not merely memorize facts but instead to understand them, to relate to events in a manner that would otherwise be impossible. I wrote the other day that there not only is no unbiased reporting, “…there shouldn’t be, because news isn’t just numbers and facts and figures. News is history coming to you live as it happens — and history is meaningless without context, without flesh and blood people living it and telling you in their own words. That’s why you fell asleep in eighth-grade history class, because without those things it’s dead and dry and dusty and boring as hell. And it’s why there’s no good to be found in unbiased journalism. Balanced, sure, when it’s appropriate — but never unbiased.”

By the way: Since I’ve exceeded my 2000-word limit, I’d like to count the number of people who made it to the end of this article. If you’re one, I’d appreciate it if you’d click this link; it’s to another article here on this site, one that rarely gets read. If enough people are interested I’ll count the clicks and let you know. And, as a broader sample has more validity, I’d be grateful if you’d also share this current Guide on Facebook or Twitter or what have you, whether or not you’ve read it all.

(Thompson quote from “Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72”. Source material and background is varied and widespread; for the most part, you can find it yourself using Google or even Wikipedia. I’d particularly like to mention BBC News, CNN, the AP News wire, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and several other major media sources which are courteous enough to permit free public access to their published archives.)

]]>https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/10/media-bias-an-unbiased-guide/feed/1spiderhopegnerphkThere Is No Opioid Epidemic, Dammit!https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/there-is-no-opioid-epidemic-dammit/
https://gnerphk.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/there-is-no-opioid-epidemic-dammit/#respondWed, 09 Aug 2017 09:06:26 +0000http://gnerphk.wordpress.com/?p=19754]]>Heroin and its analogues can be deadly. Heroin overdoses have more than tripled over the past couple of decades. The supply has ballooned; the price has plummeted. And, since 2013, dangerous synthetics have hit the streets in truly vast quantities. These are facts, beyond dispute.

Despite this, it has become apparent to me that there is in fact no such thing as an “Opioid Epidemic”. Despite massive reporting and editorializing on the subject, hearings in Congress, and now even a potential military deployment to combat smuggling in the Pacific, there is far more hype than substance, improperly aimed at the medical and pharmaceutical industries. Don’t get me wrong; they’re not blameless, but– No, that’s getting ahead of myself. Read on and I’ll explain this in proper order.

In 2015, the DEA released a report within the annual threat assessment summary. In it they refer to the increasing crisis as an “epidemic” — a political decision designed to help shift the public’s perception of drug abuse from criminal to medical. Which is a good thing overall; we have extensive evidence that imposing even the harshest punishments for drug crimes have little deterrent effect. After all, drug distributors risk death every day at the hands of people who are far less gentle than the American judicial system even at its worst. On the other hand, the medical approach to addiction works even on a national level (as Portugal showed us).

This will seem so very wrong to most Americans. We were raised in the shadow of the drug war, with romanticized criminals like Pacino in “Scarface”, “Breaking Bad”, and the Grand Theft Auto games. We watched Miami Vice, dammit; we know how drug dealers should be handled! Trouble is, that harsh approach, while satisfying, reliably fails. No matter how we try, it just plain doesn’t work.

You don’t have to take my word on it. As I wrote in an earlier article (entitled Stop The War On Drugs — you should read it), “…the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report which began with the words, “The War On Drugs has failed.” It went on to detail the ineffectiveness of incarceration… and interdiction…”, and it convincingly linked criminalization of narcotics to a highly lucrative political vote grab.

The trend toward medical as opposed to criminal policies on drug use under the Obama administration began shortly after this report was released in 2011, but with very mixed results. It was vigorously opposed by drug enforcement agencies, which if nothing else foresaw this leading to their own eventual obsolescence. And it was resisted in Congress, where “Tough On Crime” has been a vote-winning formula for decades. As a result, very little changed throughout his entire presidency apart from marijuana legalization in some states.

Contemporaneously with this, there’s been a massive increase in heroin production and distribution since the US military began to dominate Afghanistan, and as a matter of policy stabilizing poppies as an export crop (though that policy has since changed under pressure from the U.N.). As a result, the street price across the globe has plummeted and the supply vastly increased; Afghanistan now exports two-thirds of the world’s opium. By curious coincidence, the street market has also been swamped with vast amounts of poorly synthesized non-medical fentanyl, which is so powerful it can kill you just by breathing a little dust.

And you can cook it up at room temperature in your kitchen. (Just, you know, don’t keep it next to the salt shaker.) It’s this widespread availability of non-medical fentanyl analogues that’s the real killer: Without stringent quality controls, you simply can’t rely on street distributors to cut that stuff safely (or as safe as street drugs ever are).

(I just Googled “How do you synthesize fentanyl?” and got an article containing three recipes, a customer feedback study, and street marketing recommendations. On the other hand, I also got a couple of results that were fakes — one with recipes for making yourself very ill, another an obvious tracking-tag plant written by law enforcement. The moral of this story? Don’t try to synthesize fentanyl. Salt shaker, remember?)

Afghanistan is the key here. Just as happened during the conflict in Vietnam, our soldiers overseas are being exposed to common casual drug use as culture in southeast Asia, and they’re picking it up and bringing it home with them. Sometimes literally; though it’s not well-reported, there have been a large number of dishonorable (or the lesser BCD) discharges relating to attempted drug smuggling via military transport.

One reason it’s not reported on is that it’s not news; it’s nothing new. With war comes combat; with combat comes wounds, and where there’s wounds there’s painkillers. Most of these are opium-based, and people in pain who’ve also been under the extreme stress of combat are particularly vulnerable to addiction. This factor alone would serve to explain the purple line on the graph at the top of this article, which you’ll note stabilized a decade ago. Given the relatively constant deployment levels, that makes sense.

So what all this tells me is, it’s the decades of war in Afghanistan combined with our policies there that have led us to this pass. Add to this the ready availability of production recipes and the liberties in a free society, and then mix in an ossified economic class system that is perceived to enforce perpetual poverty on our youngest generation, and the end result becomes predictable, even inevitable.

And yet, in the face of this, I’ve said that there is no such thing as an “Opioid Epidemic”. Seems pretty hard to justify, right?

What we have isn’t an epidemic; it’s a concatenation of factors which combine into a spike in the statistics. As an indirect consequence of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the international supply of heroin has approximately tripled since the Taliban banned production in 1999. (International Journal Of Drug Policy) Simultaneously, the recent consolidation of power by the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico combined with an increase in production there has made it even cheaper and well-distributed. The corresponding economic woes in the United States, and a culture of hopelessness that pervades both the inner cities and the new Millennials entering the bottom of the workforce, have worked together to make traffic and use of heroin and its analogues common.

But this is nothing new, merely different. In the eighties, the drug of choice was cocaine; in the nineties, crack; then stimulants; then more recently Ecstasy. Overall drug overdoses have increased, true, but the spike in opiate overdoses is opposed by a sharp decline in every other form of drug use. Some of this stems from painkiller addiction, true, but in large part it’s simply that heroin is more deadly. As the drug use fad evolves, the next product will emerge, and opiate use will decrease proportionately. (Hopefully, the next big thing will be less likely to kill.)

Another factor of great importance is the relative newness of the artificial supply. Street dealers have decades of experience with brick heroin, but non-medical fentanyl is a very new thing indeed. It’s only to be expected that processing will be generally erratic for several years — and, with fentanyl, erratic often means deadly. But drug dealers, particularly the larger organizations, have no wish to kill their customers (quickly), so we can expect improvements to the major pipelines of supply over months rather than years. The amateurs will become a far smaller factor over that same time as customers become informed (and as they pass the salt).

Because of this, it is evident that, far from being a crisis requiring immediate action, what we have is a purely transient spike in activity coinciding with another in fatality. There’ll be loud public outcry for new laws and policies, which, once the natural forces at work in the market take effect, will be trumpeted as having been highly effective. (I’d also suggest that we could enact a government program to simply burn dollar bills wholesale, and that would have a similar impact on opiate overdoses.)

Don’t mistake me: People are dying by the thousands, and it’s tragic; it’s horrific. But it’s not because of a vast increase in drug use; it’s due mainly to a contaminated supply. In a very real sense, it’s because of opiate criminalization: The easiest way to remove contamination from the supply would be to legalize and strictly control production and distribution. Addiction could then be treated on a case-by-case basis as a medical problem. (Again, don’t take my word for that; look at Portugal.) That wouldn’t solve our economic problems, but it wouldn’t hurt; as the price was brought under control, an awful lot of now-unnecessary expenditure nationwide would vanish.

We’re falling victim to a media bias toward sensationalism. The “War On Drugs” is so 1980s, and it failed; the modern medical approach is more effective anyway — which is true, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making the word “epidemic” sexier because somehow scientific. It’s likewise popular to bash Big Pharma, and so we do — even though CDC data clearly shows overdoses are up from heroin and non-medical fentanyl, not medication. “Opium Epidemic” sells; it makes headlines and it attracts votes.

And that means we’re doomed to hear about it over and over even though it isn’t relevant to public policy — at least, we will until the next big thing comes along.

You might remember Kayleigh McEnany from the heady days of the campaign. She’s the CNN commentator who endorsed Trump waaay back when, and upon whom they regularly called to defend his positions. She’s now working directly for Trump in order to boost his accomplishments in a regular “real news” bit once each week.

I can see the head explosion coming, so let me stop you before it starts. There’s no indication she’s working for the government in any way at all. Her video appeared on the personal Facebook page of Donald J. Trump, Public Figure as opposed to his POTUS page, and there’s good reason to believe she’s employed by Trump: The Name. Yes, this looks like a P.R. move paid for by the Trump business interests, as directed by sons Eric and Donald Jr.

Even so, this is undeniably propaganda (or, if you prefer, advertising). You can watch it right here, if you want. It’s a straight-to-video pseudo-newscast that exists to say only good things about the sitting president — a move that seems straight out of some third-world tinpot dictatorship. Talk about your fake news! Heck, even Russia’s unofficial propaganda bureau pretends to be reporting actual news (though admittedly not very well.)

But it’s hardly without precedent even here in the good old USA. Why, there was a time when you couldn’t run for dogcatcher without having a family newspaper on your side. Madison used his pet newspapers to sell his War in 1812; Jackson bought papers to win the presidency; the Lincoln machine ruthlessly abrogated the First Amendment to win re-election and with it the Civil War. This latest version is nothing new. It’s corrupt and biased as hell, but so is every press release ever written, every lobbyist or commentator or talking head on the airwaves, and every news program that’s driven by ratings and ad dollars. (Except Newsnight, and that’s a work of fiction — ironically, one that was driven by ratings and ad dollars. Damned good television, though.)

So no, this is nothing horrible, nothing corrupt, nothing even all that unusual. It’s someone pretending to give you the news while showing off the logo of the corporate sponsor in the background. You should be used to that by now.

Oh, we had an independent press once, but that was long ago, before broadcast television convinced us with the illusion that there was such a thing as unbiased reporting. There’s not; apart from the box scores, there shouldn’t be, because news isn’t just numbers and facts and figures. News is history coming to you live as it happens — and history is meaningless without context, without flesh and blood people living it and telling you in their own words. That’s why you fell asleep in eighth-grade history class, because without those things it’s dead and dry and dusty and boring as hell. And it’s why there’s no good to be found in unbiased journalism. Balanced, sure, when it’s appropriate — but never unbiased.

But a profit-driven entertainment program pretending to give you the news while desperately seeking ratings points and ad dollars? That’s not news, no more from CNN than it was from Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart. It’s a circus, and we who watch it? We’re the clowns.

But of course this isn’t even that. It’s a regular, unapologetic, corporate propaganda video which hired itself a nationally-known pretty face.

Don’t be fooled by the blonde hair; she’s no bimbo. She’s intelligent, well-spoken, and clever enough to earn a J.D. from Harvard. She can also write; her articles at Above The Law and “The Hill” are well-crafted and compelling. (This one’s a good example.) There’s a decent chance she’ll have some input into content given her proven chops, but unlike mainstream media, the advertising arm of a major corporation doesn’t often try to maintain any pretense of journalistic ethics or balanced reporting, so there’s no guarantees at all. I’ll tell ya: If I got peanuts for my writing it’d be a raise, and even I wouldn’t take that gig.

…well, maybe. I guess I’d have to look at the severance package. I mean, what the hell; it’s honest work, right?

Now, if only they hire someone to handle the man’s Twitter account…

(Image captured from the Donald J. Trump Facebook page. I assert no copyright, and am honestly only using the image because I think the Trump people would be darn foolish to try and stop me promoting their new paid mouthpiece. So I’m a little critical; they say all press is good press, and nobody has demonstrated that better than our current president. Anyway, this in no way indicates that anyone including me is allowed to use this image.)

If you don’t know where Arlington is, “Pentagon” and “Blast Radius” may remind you. In the shadow of our nation’s capitol, this mega-suburb was originally part of the District until Virginia took it back after decades of of mismanagement and neglect. It’s a hodgepodge of skyscrapers, hotels, million-dollar postage-stamp houses, Reagan National Airport, and more Starbucks per square mile than ought to be permitted under the Geneva Convention. Arlington is where you live if you’re young, single, work for the government, and don’t mind sharing your apartment with sixteen other people ’cause the rent’s so damn high.

This is not the place one expects to find a pitmaster, much less one who knows his business. Well, guess what?

Let me just start with: DAMN good ribs, people. Lean but not too lean, these are pork spareribs with a peppercorn rub, and they melt in your mouth. They’re great with or without sauce, and that’s exactly what I look for. Now, the St. Louis cut isn’t the most generous (at $37 per rack!) but the flip side is, it’s tailor-made for even cooking and hot damn weren’t they just perfect.

What else can I say? The collards come with great ‘cue; the pulled pork is to kill for; the brisket coulda come from a Texas smoker — perfect and pink, deep smoky crust. (Only thing I object to is, I couldn’t get a Carolina sauce for my pulled pork.) There’s beef ribs and some amazing beef sausage that’s well worth the price of admission. And don’t get me started on the nachos — oh dear Lord!

Now, I do need to warn you about something: This being Arlington, well, there’s certain compromises ya just gotta make. This place serves food, but it also serves that stuff that food eats — you know; salad. Some of it has kale.

But no fear, barbecue fans; they won’t give you any unless you ask special for it.